If you’ve ever had a hankering for riding roughshod on your herd of undisciplined ducks, CTA has training for you. Consider it a “dude ranch” for duck wranglers.
Seriously, if your efforts to lasso internal and external communications have you climbing your rope, you need only sign up for the Communications Strand at CTA’s Summer Institute, Aug. 2-6 on the UCLA campus.

K-12 and community college classified and certificated employees on specific leaves will no longer have to clear with their employers out-of-state travel, thanks to Gov. Brown’signingof CTA-supported AB 915, by Assembly Majority Leader Chris Holden (D-Pasadena). The measure eliminates outdated travel restrictions that prohibit employees who are receiving workers’ compensation payments to travel outside California without the approval of their governing board.

CTA congratulates Pico Rivera Educator Jose Lara for being awarded the first-ever NEA Social Justice Activist Award today at the ‪#‎NEARA15in Orlando.
Lara is a social studies teacher at Santee Education Complex High School in Los Angeles, recognized for his work in educational justice.

Delegates spent more than 90 minutes on Saturday discussing New Business Item 11 that directs the NEA to support, in ways it finds appropriate and effective, efforts to remove the confederate battle flag from public schools and public places.

“Removing the confederate flag from our public schools is just one of the many steps we must take to address the institutional racism that continues to exist across our nation. The flag, instead, belongs in history books and museums,” said CTA President Eric C. Heins. “There is no place in our schools and communities for objects that hurt and divide rather than promote unity and growth as a society. We have made some progress, but the shootings in Charleston remind us of the work we have to do as a nation. Approval of this motion is just one step.”

(Photo above) More than 8,000 educators attending the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly (RA) in Orlando, Florida, convened for its 153rd annual meeting Friday immediately taking time to honor the victims gunned down in a Charleston, South Carolina Church June 17.

After a touching tribute to the victims, RA delegates adopted a motion that redoubles the NEA’s efforts to fight institutional racism.

(Photo above from left) Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) and Jeff Johnston, an area high school teacher and vice chair of CTA State Council Negotiations Committee, discuss some of the key elements of CTA co-sponsored bills that would make charter schools more accountable to the public.

Educators working for the California Virtual Academy (CAVA), a statewide charter school, and members of several key CTA State Council committees were meeting with lawmakers in the state Capitol Tuesday afternoon in support of a package of bills aimed to increase accountability and transparency at charter schools and to ensure that their focus is on students, not profit.

(Photo above) NEA President Lily Eskelsen García is praising the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. NEA and 22 state affiliates were part of a labor coalition that filed amicus briefs in support of the efforts to protect the rights of same gender couples to marry. CTA President Eric C. Heins has also praised the ruling in his contacts with the media.

Forty-eight years after it struck down state laws barring inter-racial marriage, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday handed down an equally important decision, one that allows persons of the same gender to wed and invalidates state laws barring such marriages.

(Photo above) Billed as the “World’s largest Democratic Deliberative Assembly,” the annual NEA Representative Assembly brings together more than 8,000 elected educator-policymakers. Last year, delegates met in Denver. This year, they will assemble in Orlando, FL beginning in the last week of June.
Led by its newly elected team of officers, about 1,000 CTA members will be heading to the 94th annual National Education Association’s Representative Assembly in Orlando, FL this week.
CTA President Eric Heins, an elementary teacher, Vice President Theresa Montaño, a community college professor, and Secretary-Treasurer David Goldberg, an elementary teacher, will lead this year’s delegation.

(Photo above) At a news conference last week at the state Capitol, Assembly Member Roger Hernandez (at podium) and charter school parents and teachers spelled out how a lack of transparency and a for-profit motive are harming students at a statewide charter school, the California Virtual Academy). They urged lawmakers to approve measures designed to increase charter school accountability.
Three CTA-cosponsored measures to increase charter school accountability and transparency are scheduled for hearings in two legislative committees on Wednesday, July 1.

(Photo above) CTA Member Lobbyist Jeff Johnson, a teacher and vice-chair of the State Council Negotiations Committee, and Peter Minett, a teacher and member of the committee, discuss CTA-cosponsored charter school bills with a legislative staffer on Tuesday prior to a meeting with lawmakers in support of the measures.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- CTA members came back from the state Capitol on Wednesday having won a small victory in an ongoing battle to increase accountability and transparency at the state’s public charter schools.